Rehabilitating and Reintegrating Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters

This project supports the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ) which applies a comprehensive approach to reintegrating and rehabilitating returning foreign terrorist fighters (RFTF) and the lessons learned from its work in the Middle East North Africa and West Balkans to the Sahel Region. Project activities include: (1) facilitating an introductory workshop allowing the IIJ to present the project’s capacity building goals to the attendees while allowing representatives from participating countries to present their current national efforts to facilitate the formulation of capacity building; (2) conducting in-country meetings by project staff in order to assess the actual needs and conduct a gap-analysis working closely with the recipient country’s staff to determine the relevant stakeholders that aim to participate in capacity building activities; (3) implementing four workshops for each selected beneficiary state that focus on providing policy and decision makers and practitioners’ knowledge in order to develop their capacities concerning legal/legislative policies procedures and programmatic aspects for introducing effect RFTF rehabilitation and reintegration strategies; and (4) conducting a series of meetings in-country with relevant stakeholders who participated in the country needs assessment to assess plans and activities being implemented to understand any variation in RFTF related needs of the country.

The expected outcome for this project include: (1) increased efforts by participating states to implement international best practices related to the reintegration and rehabilitation of returning foreign terrorist fighters; and (2) further progress made by participating states in using acquired skills and expertise during this project.